In July 2014, I posted to social media a photo of my fingers dipped in purple ink, raised in an exultant two-finger salute: I had just cast my vote for Joko Widodo, popularly known as Jokowi, candidate number two on the ballot in the Indonesian presidential race. I wasn’t alone: Almost 71 million voters ushered Jokowi into the presidency...

No one told Soe Tjen Marching about the anti-communist killings. Growing up in Surabaya, East Java, under the dictator Suharto's "New Order", her schoolbooks told her that in the dark of night on September 30, 1965, an Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) cadre kidnapped and murdered six army generals in an attempted coup...

At 6 a.m., Muslimah, 45, steams rice and fries tempeh for her husband and children. After they eat, she dons a baseball cap and heads to work. Like many others in East Java who were displaced by the mud volcano, she drives an ojek, or motorcycle taxi. Her passengers are tourists, who flock to look upon the blighted landscape she once called home...

At the edge of this expanse of barren land, a house lies buried, filled almost to its roof with sand. This is the Khin family home, the last in their village after more than 3,000 families were evicted from the area to make way for development. It’s hard to imagine it now, but this mostly empty stretch of sand in northern Phnom Penh was once...

Kam Put remembers when his village was surrounded by lush forest. “But now,” he said, “only 20 percent is left.” Mr. Put, 31, is ethnic Lun, one of eight indigenous minority groups in Ratanakkiri province. A member of the Phnom Kuk commune council in Veun Sai district, he says the trees on his ancestral land have vanished in recent years...

Perched on stilts 2 meters off the ground, a bamboo hut stands out amid homes of unpainted wood. A sarong, a belt and a pair of boxer shorts hang out to dry over the porch railings. This isn’t your average bachelor pad. In these hills of Ratanakkiri, indigenous Kreung tribes traditionally build a girl or boy their own hut...

It was Friday night and Parisians were out in the 10th arrondissement, a once gritty, working-class immigrant district now home to a lively cafe and bar scene. Across from popular bar Le Carillon, Le Petit Cambodge was serving bowls of rice noodles and curry to its young, urban clientele...